Graveyard Barista

Epic Penultimate Post

Last night was the best shift of my life, an absolutely fantastic way to end my days of working as a barista.

I made myself a coffee when I got there, and made a sign that read ‘TONIGHT is my LAST SHIFT!’ in big blue letters. I stuck it to the counter, and started making my last few coffees.

A few turned out to be many - the first few hours were really, really busy. I was in a good mood though, so I weathered it with a smile on my face. I chatted with customers about my plans for the year, wished them well and thanked them for their custom and tips over the past year and a half.

The cute girl from yesterday’s post came in, and even though I was too busy to chat with her, it wouldn’t have felt right if she hadn’t. A friend of mine from what seems like a lifetime ago tracked me down through my blog and came to visit, which was also awesome.

Friends of mine came in a little after that to celebrate a birthday, and I was able to deliver delicious dessert goodness at the stroke of midnight to help the celebrations along. The firefighting cabbie, an avid commenter on the blog, came in and said hi, which was really wonderful.

Customers kept coming in, thanking me for the coffee, and saying that they would miss me. People who had never tipped me before did so, which felt nice – it’s such a simple way of showing appreciation, and I felt very appreciated. There were hugs and handshakes from co-workers and customers alike, and promises to keep in contact – promises that I intend to keep. One of my regulars (Gomez from the Adams Family) wrote ‘how [sic] horibble’ on my sign, which drew comments for the rest of the night.

The night quietened down, and the morning wasn’t as busy as it could have been. It was around then that I realised I was enjoying the job in a way that I haven’t in a long time – nothing was irritating me the way it had been for the last few weeks.

Some customers (particularly cabbies) had avoided the shop for a long time due to the poor service and coffee quality, and had started coming again when word got around that I was good at my job. They were quite upset at the thought that they couldn’t get a coffee from me any more.

By the end of the night, I had earned $140 in tips, which works out at just over $17 an hour. I feel like I’ve provided quality service while I’ve been working there, and this just helped to drive the point home.

I’m sitting in my local café right now, feeling very flattered indeed! As I said, it was the best shift of my life and a really great way to end it.

And so, thus ends my blog.

I’ve decided to continue writing. My new blog will be called A Mathematical Perspective. Its mission is twofold: to show people how awesome mathematics really is, where it crops up in life and how it makes things better, and to undo a lot of the misconceptions that people have about the subject. These misconceptions are usually due to the way mathematics is used more like a weapon to hurt children than an insight into the universe while you’re at high school. I’m very passionate about mathematics, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it when it goes live in a week’s time. I'll post a link to the new blog as soon as I get it all set up and configured, and that will be my last post in this blog.

I’ve got some people I’d like to thank.

Firstly, I’d like to thank Adrian from cablog.com.au. Without his support, you probably wouldn’t have ever got to see my entries. His links and behind-the-scenes advice were invaluable. Thank you so much.

Thank you too to everyone who left comments. I read every one with glee! I’d especially like to thank Dataceptionist, steve at the pub, firefighting cabbie, BB, Sean, Iron Pugilist, and anyone else who made a habit of commenting on my musings!

Thank you, everyone, for reading my entries, linking me, emailing me and helping me create what has been a moderately successful blog. Thank you to my real-life and online friends, all of whom were wonderfully encouraging and constructively critical while I wrote.

But most of all, thank you. I hope you enjoyed the view from the other side, and I hope to see you over at my new blog soon. Go out and tip your barista sometime, for me.

Flirtation

Ever since I've been working full time, there's been a girl who comes in every now and again at around 1am. She works at a bar nearby, and comes in for her break.

She and I have talked about busy nights, bad customers and working in the industry, and she's also totally, totally cute. We've been having this 'I don't know if I'm flirting but I think I am' sort of thing, and I've really enjoyed her company.

On Tuesday night, she found out I was leaving and promised to bring something from her work to celebrate, as she wouldn't be working for the rest of the week. At around 4am she came back with a Double Quick Fuck, which is a mixer drink of Baileys, Kahlua and Midori.

Sounds awesome, huh? But I couldn't drink it. I didn't think I'd be able to work drunk, and I'm still on my P plates (embarrassingly enough) so if I had a BAC of anything but 0 if and when I was pulled over on the way home, I'd lose my licence. For some reason I didn't want to admit to being only 21... I knew she wanted me to toss it back and thank her straight away, but instead I made lame excuses about not being able to handle my liquor and she left soon afterwards.

I put it in a take away container and drank it as soon as I got home. It was tasty and awesome.

While our interaction might not have ended in the perfect way, it still made my night. I'm just kicking myself for not being able to drink it!

Tonight is my last night. I'm excited. I'm hoping to see some of my wonderful readers, and take home a big sack of loot many tips!!

Councilfail

The council came around the night before.

Apparently, our licence has the following terms:
-Two tables and four chairs are permitted outside from 6am-12am weekdays, and 6am-6pm weekends.
-Other times, no tables and chairs are permitted outside.

We currently have five tables and at least 16 chairs outside, and have had so for as long as I've worked there. People love sitting outside - it's cooler, you can smoke, and you can more easily fit more people around the table.

That means that for most of my graveyard, I can't have people sitting outside. The guy who works the Sunday graveyard was told by the council that they would come back every hour and fine him personally $330 per person who was sitting out there!

I decided to risk it last night, and didn't pack up chairs or tables, with the plan to plead ignorance if they came back. It's too important to the business and to my regulars to be able to sit outside. They didn't come by, and I'm not going to bow to their tactics unless they come by and tell me personally!

I just can't believe that the council would do this. I know it's their job and whatever, but I hate it when bureaucracy exists just to ruin fun for money. There isn't a lot of noise, there isn't footpath blocking, it's just mean.

Postscript: I've been receiving a lot of emails about where I work, and I'm now worried that all of The Internet will show up on Thursday and want a free coffee. So, here are two addenda to my offer:
1. Only the first 15 people who mention my blog will receive theirs free.
2. Free coffee will only be served after 12:00am, when my co-worker has left.
...sorry to be like this, but I don't want to be eviscerated by my boss after I've finished at the place!

Adieu, Adieu...

I've given my boss notice - next week is my last week at the café.

My plan was always to work last year, save up money, and return to do my Honours year this year. The plan has pulled off, and I'm in a financial situation where I only have to work as a casual mathematics tutor this year to keep me afloat while I mooch off my savings.

My boss hasn't found a replacement for me to train, and probably won't find one until after I've finished.

I've started to tell some of my regulars, and they're disappointed, which is nice. Part of me would like to think that the café would suffer for my absence, but it will probably continue on just as it has for the last 36 years.

My blog will run for another week or so - talking about my last week, and sharing a few more anecdotes. I don't think anyone wants to read about the exciting world of mathematics tutoring, so I'll quietly return to my status as 'internet lurker' once I'm finished.

In case you've figured out where I work (which shouldn't be too hard) and live in Sydney, next Thursday night/Friday morning is my last shift. Maybe I'll see you there. Mention my blog on Thursday night, and I'll give you a free coffee.

If you'd like to be one of the last two Invitational Thursday entries, email them to me!

Thank you for reading so far. Stay tuned, though - it's not quite over yet.

Invitational Thursday 8: Happy Holidays

Here's an entry from Dataceptionist, one of my (much appreciated!) avid readers.

"I used to work the switchboard for an IT company. Within this company we had a large call-centre section with lots of different companies as clients. One of these clients was a well-known Anti-Virus Software company, which had a fairly long wait time in its queues. I can only speculate from my contact with their callers that this is because they were constantly walking moronic people through their installation, which meant average call length was fairly long. And yet they never seemed to put more people on to cope with this...

Anyway, so their customers would occasionally manage to figure out who we were, and instead of ringing the 1300 number that everyone was meant to ring, they would call our switchboard, usually demanding to speak to a manager, and skip the queue.

So, Christmas 05, I fielded a call from an irate woman trying to get through to the Support line for the aforementioned Anti-Virus company.

After chewing me out for a bit with such original and heart-warming gems as:
"This service is appalling",
"Don't you have enough staff?" (no), and
"Don't put me through to India! I want to talk to an Australian!",
she asked to speak to a manager, so I placed her on hold while I located the supervisor. Previous experience had told me that I needed to speak with the manager in question to warn him she was angry, so I had to put her on hold while I do this. I call my manager, he picks up, I explain situation, he says "OK put her through".
I go back to do that, and she's gone.
*shrug* oh well. I rang the manager back, told him that she'd hung up. We *shrugged*, and I took the next call.

At this time of year, I'm trying to spread a little cheer, as you do in a mind-numbingly boring role, and with every call I had been greeting each caller with "Merry Christmas, **Company name** *me* Speaking!" I had quite a few regular callers and everyone was getting a kick out of it and complimenting me on getting into the spirit.

So next call comes through, "Merry Christmas, **Company name** *me* Speaking!"
"How dare you place me on hold! I'm the managing director of a large company, don't you realise I don't have time to sit here on hold for hours!? Just put me through to a manager already!"
Eeek!
"Sorry ma'am, I was just announcing the call, he's expecting you. Putting you through now"
( to manager) "OK, here she is." (very quick!)
I go back to call ......she's gone....again.
I rang the manager back, explained that she'd hung up AGAIN, and went to take the next call.

Switchboard rings, I kind of wince in anticipation - is it her again?'
It is. *sigh*
"Merry Christmas, **Company.....(cut off)" "
"Don't you bloody Merry Christmas Me!!!! And your hold music is irritating the shit out of me!!" *screaming* "I told you NOT to put me on hold again! What are you, stupid? Can't you do your job properly!!?? How hard is it to transfer a call (etc etc etc)"
*voice quavering* "I'm sorry ma'am, the only way I can transfer you is to put you on hold briefly"
But she doesn't care. I managed to transfer her through in the end, and as far as I know, she was dealt with just fine.

I on the other hand ended up being so badly shaken by her screaming down the phone about how incompetent I was that I burst into tears at the end of the phone call.

Thankfully I didn't get many of those phone calls."

Wow. Thank you for reminding me why I never got a job in a call centre! I've only come close to bursting into tears once, and that was at my old job with the promiscuous Hungarian. Very manly, I know, but after being treated horribly for a long period of time by horrible people can get to you after a while.

Also, that 'irritating the shit out of me' reminded me of Tourette's Guy, one of my favourite internet celebrities (link NSFW!)

Please email me at gybarista@gmail.com with your submissions!

Insert Coin(s)

I’m being treated like a glorified coffee machine lately.

I’ll be in the middle of making coffee, concentrating on what I’m doing and looking down at the jug or the shot, when someone barks an order at me. I won’t have looked up at them, said hi, even acknowledged their existence, and still they expect me to start on their coffee. It doesn’t matter if there are people waiting before them; they just want me to spit out what they want ASAP.

I was really strained last night. As I mentioned yesterday, things have been stressful, and I haven’t been sleeping enough, making me shorter with rude customers than I’d like to be.

Here’s the scene at about 2am:

 

[GB is making ten takeaway lattes for a film group working nearby. He is looking at his jug, trying to co-ordinate the temperature and amount of froth for the milk and synchronizing the shots to get maximum crema preservation. It takes concentration, and it shows on his face]

[Enter Rude Guy. GB does not look up, due to the aforementioned concentrating]

Rude Guy: [rudely and loudly] I need two flat whites!

[GB does not acknowledge him]

[beat]

RG: [leaning over the counter] Excuse me! I need two flat whites!

[GB looks up and sardonically raises an eyebrow at RG]

RG: Did you even hear me? I said two flat whites!

GB: I heard you, but I’m not making your coffees while you carry on like that.

RG: What?

GB: I’ll take your order in a second. I’m not a coffee machine, dude. I’m also not your slave.

RG: Well FUCK YOU THEN!

[exit RG]

 

I can’t tell you how much better this little exchange made me feel!

Rage!

I attended a protest during the day on Sunday. I don't often do so, mind you - this was my second protest attendance ever! I usually sleep when it was on, and it threw my sleeping patterns out of whack.

So I didn't get much sleep before last night's shift, making me a little cranky. I hid it pretty well for the start of my shift, but as it drew on I got more and more so.

It was just one of those nights. I would work myself so hard to give my best presentation, or be fast but still really good, and virtually no-one tipped. Other people were just rude: one woman exploded at a co-worker of mine (who comes in for the last half hour of my shift) because he asked her "What do you need?" instead of "What would you like?". When I tried to defuse the situation, she got even worse until she stormed out in a big harrumph.

I was a bit frazzled, and my finishing time of 7am ticked over. No relief was in sight (my aforementioned co-worker can't make coffee). People came in, I hadn't had a chance to change over the tills (which takes about 10 minutes), and I start to get really angry. After the night I had, staying longer was just not a good prospect!

She swans in at 7:10am. No apology. I'm so angry that I know if I talk to her I'll regret it later due to the inevitable screaming and swearing. I just change over my tills with a dark look on my face, which she seemed to notice.

She's a terrible worker. Horrible, burnt, ugly coffee. Messy. Disorganised. Slow. Makes mistakes with money.

She's also kinda hot.

So when some guy walks in and expresses grandiose sorrow because she's leaving soon, about how much she'll be missed, how she makes the place brighter, how she makes wonderful coffee, and then tips her $5, my pulse starts racing. I want to yell: "I work five times as hard as her, make coffee that's ten times as good, and you're like this? All because of her looks and blatant 'I want tips' flirtation? You tipped her $5 for that? What's wrong with you? What's wrong with everyone?!"

Instead, I slam my till in and storm out of there, startling the complimenting guy while I try to shake the red out of the edges of my vision. I had to take several deep breaths when I got in my car before I started to drive home.

I counted my tips for the evening. I earned $4.60.

Marcus

Ah, Marcus. I mentioned a while back that he deserved his own entry, and here it is.

Marcus is like Basil Fawlty – his ideas about customer service are very… brutal. An example from the other day sticks in my mind; a man came in and ordered a few coffees, then a few cakes after I’d finished making some of the coffees. Marcus went to organise the cakes, and brought them all back in bags. The customer, recalling some other person’s wishes, asked for another coffee and another cake.

Now, this can be annoying. It can mess with your memory, mess with your synchronization and waste time when a customer is like this, but it’s just something you have to deal with.

Not so with Marcus. After he brought him the last cake, he said:

“I’m going to have to take your money now, before you can think up something else to order”.

…

How he can say that to a customer is beyond me. This kind of treatment is what gives us baristas such a bad name.

He’s also been known to:

-Make customers he doesn’t like wait, just to feel superior,

-Throw things when the place get stressful,

-Yell at customers who disobey his arbitrary and inconsistent rules and

-Snap at the slightest provocation.

Just to top it off, as you can imagine, he’s like the plague when it comes to tips, and he’s never less than five minutes late to every shift. All in all, a bit of a disaster to have around the place.

In return, he’s been abused, sworn at and punched numerous times. He’s had his bike superglued to the ground, and he’s even been knocked off his bike by a cab (though the cabbie claims it was an accident – that didn’t stop him telling the story to every cabbie he saw in the café and getting his coffee shouted for him, though). This only helps reinforce his Me vs. The Customer idea Marcus has in his brain.

Funnily enough, as a co-worker, he’s great when he’s not working or when it’s not busy. He’s nice, generous, respectful and hilarious. He loves to deal with difficult customers, giving me a chance to relax. He roasts the coffee, and part of the reason most customers love our place is because of the excellent coffee – if only they knew they had him to thank!

So that’s why I always try to stick up for him when customers bitch about him (and oh boy, do they bitch about him), even though they’re probably right to say something about the awful treatment they receive at his hands.

We had a fight a few weeks ago, because he refuses to clean the coffee machine with the chemical cleaner in the afternoon, like he’s supposed to. I had an issue with this recently, and so I got angry. He and I fought, in the sense that he exploded, yelled at me and stormed out. We didn’t speak until Tuesday night – I was in such an excellent mood (due to life things, not work things) that I couldn’t keep up the silent treatment, and we’re back to being friends again, it seems.

If you’ve got a waiter like this somewhere near your place, you might not think they’re worth the bother. And maybe they’re not. But if you’re lucky, and can put up with the random explosions, getting on their good side is always much more rewarding than fighting all the time!

Invitational Thursday 7: Two Finger Discount

This entry is courtesy of Brunhilde, a friend of mine.

“I used to work in a cinema, dishing out tickets and working at the candy bar. I used to hate that every movie was spoiled – having to work, then stand up the back as the movie finished ruined any future viewing experiences.

It was a pretty crappy job, but I was only a teenager, and dream jobs usually come later. Whilst I got cheaper movie tickets for being an employee, food was always full price (if you want to call popcorn and ice cream ‘food’). It was a strict rule that I couldn’t give the ticket discount to anyone else, and same with the food – full price for friends.

I was taking out my till for the end of the night, having worked the Box Office that evening. As I had finished and I was waiting for the managers to finish with their money stuff, I was watching the CCTV security cameras as they flicked around the complex. 

‘Oh, there’s James now!’ I called out, pointing to one of the visual-only TV feeds from downstairs. It was unusual to see someone at the Candy Bar counter after the box office sales had closed, hence my exclamation. Upon closer inspection it seemed like two other employees were being served by him. My managers spun around and began watching.

James put two huge buckets of popcorn and two huge drinks in front of his fellow employees. To my horror, he began exaggeratedly faking a sale, gesticulating wildly but never touching the screen. His friends started laughing. He then spun around and gave the camera two fingers, one with each hand, accompanied by a stupid grin on his face.

Unsurprisingly, he was fired, and so were his friends. I felt so guilty – if I hadn’t called out, the managers wouldn’t have looked around, and they’d still have their jobs along with their free food!”

I must say that I’ve encouraged my boss to fire stupid and/or late and/or thieving staff members, but this never happened to me. We have security cameras, but they don’t record – they’re there for watching the staff when my boss can be bothered.

My boss’ attitude towards food and drink is a lot better, in my mind – eat and drink as much as you like, and don’t pay for it!

Please email your Invitational Thursday entries to gybarista@gmail.com.

Rain

I love the rain. It’s been raining for several days in Sydney, and it’s been fantastic. I love it for several reasons.

I love it because it takes away the heat and humidity, and trust me, if you think it’s hard getting to sleep at midnight because of the heat, try sleeping at midday.

I love it because I can get a carpark near work without much hassle, as most people stay inside.

But most of all I love it because it completely changes the way people operate at cafés. There are far fewer takeaways, far fewer caffeine junkies who are only there for their fix. In response, there are far more couples, small groups and people by themselves. These customers stay for hours working on laptops, talking, reading, drinking my coffee and having a good time. The tips are good, and the people are nice to talk to.

You might not feel like going out, but cafés are best in the rain.